How much would you pay (or me charge) for this?

[cheaperthanchips]

I'm offering a reduced rate for a service I offer. My clients are professionals who are usually well paid. However, I want to offer a very reduced rate for a limited number as part of 'paying back' (for clients who may be temporarily short of funds.)

If the usual rate was £95, what do you think of the reduced rate:

£10
£15
£20

They'd need 4 bookings as it's a course.
I don't want to do it free as they need to have some skin in the game, even as a nominal fee.

I meant to quote this

Without knowing what you’re offering, I’ll just say that the usual for courses of services (4 facials, 4 treatments, ‘stop smoking in 4 sessions’/NLP etc) is 4 for the price of 3. Or with 10% off (so 4x95= 380, but they’d perhaps pay £340). This works not because it devalues your sessions, but you benefit by having the money in hand up front (ie it is working for you/earning interest, guarantees they commit and don’t just stop after 2) and it encourages clients to commit to 3-4 sessions because the’ve already paid.

Is it a Yoni massage? If so, that's expensive. Is it cleaning? Expensive. Is it shopping or closet clearing, it's reasonable. If it's counselling, Its reasonable. Is it babysitting? Far too expensive...

Tell me what your service is?

I can't get my head round this whole thread. Please, just don't do it Op.
Voluntary. Discount for well paid, short of funds professionals. None of this makes any business sense, whatsoever. Please, just don't.

The problem is that people who genuinely need a bit of a break won’t feel comfortable approaching to request a reduction in course fees. What you’ll get are chancers who want a bargain but may not really deserve the concessions rate.

I think you need to either apply it based on some objective threshold (receiving income-based support, students/first year in the industry) or you need to have eligibility assessed by an external organisation (job centre?) and people referred to you.

In a really general sense, £65 for a £95 course sounds a reasonable reduction. If you start charging £10 or £20 people will just assume your services are a bit shit if you undersell them so much.

Ignore the bitching @cheaperthanchips.
I would however say your proposals are far too inexpensive- there needs to be a meaningful investment to value your work.

Your margin is one way to think about it (though notice comment above re fixed costs). Or perhaps 50% discount -still meaningful but at those numbers the end result is affordable for the kind of clients you take just who may be in strained circumstances.

A 100k professional has a shortage of funds? And thus now can't afford a CBT session?

If that the normal going rate for your type of services?

Can they claim this as a legitimate expense?

4 sessions is a drop in the ocean, so someone has 4 cheap sessions with you and then what? They pay full price or leave treatment? If you want to give back you're better off volunteering for mind or similar, offer a set number of hours a month

Just to add, again depending on what you are offering, there is no harm in offering a reduced £65/per session fee for FT students or the under 25s. Easy to implement and offer. Some people offer reduct rates to people on benefits, but I think it’s a bit intrusive to ask for evidence of this before agreeing a reduced rate.

I'd think you must normally grossly overcharge if you can offer such a huge discount

I know what you are trying to do.

my psychotherapist friend works privately, has a day where they volunteer for free at a local organisation and has a very small number of spaces in her private practice that she uses in the way you are describing, she works by donation. So she settles on a figure with the client after having a conversation with them.

So she hasn’t got a standard reduction rate as it changes depending on who she is working with in that circumstance.
that means she has had (very very few) clients who pay for example as low as £5 per session because they literally couldn’t afford more but she has had others who had more financial means but we’re still struggling who paid somewhere between 20% to 50% off her private fee.

she advertises that she has a small amount of spaces (when she has them) that are at a reduced rate for clients in certain circumstances and when someone responds or she gets a referral looking to fill that space when she meets them for the first time part of the initial consultation is coming up with a cost that they can afford.

of course I don’t know all the details as it’s not my practice but thought it might be useful for you.

have you got anyone in the same field you know you can ask as others must do similar?

or have you thought about volunteering somewhere with the time you would have given discounts as that would help separate your private working from it but you still can give back.

@cheaperthanchips I'd personally NOT do discounts.

A family member had CBT with a very good person - I know they are good as I had them as a short term therapist via a 'charity'- It didn't cost me anything, and I knew he had a very good reputation.

I told family member about them, he charged £50 per hour {back then}
Family member only had 5 sessions, {after a 'free' one, to see if they could work together}-family member found the intensive 5 sessions were very helpful.

If you want to ''give back'' maybe volunteer free services to a charity?

It would be tricky otherwise, I think.

Instead of offering a cheaper service to wealthy cliehts who don’t need charity, why not offer a certain amount of free sessions to people who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Your way of doing it seems very bonkers. It’s hard to put the price back up after reducing it.

I too thought this- But a family member had something come up, and I suggested a very good CBT practitioner - They only needed 5 sessions to help them.
It pulls a tight focus onto the problem /issue at hand, and endless therapy isn't always necessary - If open ended, it can just turn into a chat session.

If I would normally expect to have to pay circa £95 for this particular service, then seeing a price drop like that would make think either that the business offering it was in desperate financial difficulties and needed to get whatever work they possibly could to keep afloat, or that the considerably reduced price would be an equally considerable reduction in the quality of the service provided.

You are on a hiding to nothing. There is no such thing as a (nearly) free lunch, which is essentially what you are trying to tempt them with.

Of course it matters what the service is!

I'd look at that vastly reduced rate and think you must be very new to the industry or lacking competence or that it looks like a scam. You only ever get what you pay for and everyone knows that if a price looks too good to be true it almost certainly's going to be a let-down or a con.

If you're offering a tarot card reading or Indian head massage maybe I'd take the risk — no damage done if you turn out to be a charlatan. But if your service was, say, doing something with my children or pets, or I needed to get naked for a massage or a body treatment, I wouldn't trust you — I'd be looking for the catch.

I would suggest £20 as a fair nominal fee. Any lower and you are devaluing CBT, in fact I would suggest £100 for 4 sessions as an offer

Better to enable a payment by instalments

I don't and wouldn't. The sector is already undervalued by many of the volunteer roles that qualified professionals are expected to fill. As a professional I worked hard and paid a lot for my education and training and wouldn't cheapen it tbh. Not many other professional roles are expected to be reduced or free.
Obviously up to you but how would you reinstate your original fees for these clients?

I've done this. There's full fee, there's the standard sliding scale, and then there's a radical sliding scale. For those committed to ongoing work, desperately in need, who would otherwise languish for years on waiting lists, with proof of receipt of benefits, for just a few pounds per weekly session. (And even that is a huge ask for a great many people.) Not CBT, but in the same wheelhouse.

It's a good thing to do, a necessary thing to do in a society like ours, and if we lived in a country with more caring and inclusive values, it would be an utterly unremarkable, even the expected thing to do.

Don't overdo the idealism. Make sure you have the financial balance right and are still safeguarding for your own unexpected needs. I was still tinkering with this, which left me more vulnerable financially than I might otherwise have been when I became long-term ill. On the other hand, I genuinely helped people who would otherwise have been unable to access help. Plus, I fundamentally like and respect my choice to do this, which is priceless.

Of course it matters!

The Op implies that she charges £95 per session. Without knowing what the service is and what a "session" is it's meaningless.

Some services might be worth £95 per session. Some won't be.

This ^

I don't get the "paying back" either - it sounds patronising and condescending.

I also wouldn't discount my rate by any more than 50%.

"So by the same token, are you also wondering why poor people get branded food for free at a food bank but you have to pay premium because you’re wealthier??..."

The difference of course is that being fed is essential to life. If people can't afford to feed themselves somebody else has to subsidise it.

CBT is not essential to life so nobody else needs to subsidise it.

This ^ makes much more sense. Keep the two aspects of the service entirely separate.

The OP could also offer their services via an appropriate charity.